Be Back Monday!

Jose and I are going to be spending some time with dear friends for a long weekend. So no posting from me for the rest of the week. Anyway I hope everyone has recovered from their food comas yesterday and we will be back on Monday with our regularly scheduled programming!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Hi all I hope today you are spending the day with friends and family celebrating. Jose and I will be spending the day in our PJ's (I worked last night) and just enjoying our last Christmas just the two of us. Hope everyone has an amazing day and only minimal overeating (yeah right who am I kidding, pig out!).

Nursery: The Mood Board

As many of you know I am obsessed with Young House Love. (They are the main inspiration for me starting this blog) Any who, they used to put together some really awesome mood boards for themselves as well as others a while back. I think they have stopped now just due to time constraints but you can still access all the old mood board on their site.

Well this got me to thinking that maybe I should put one together for the nursery. You know just to keep me on track as to what I am wanting for this little nugget's room. So I used Picmonkey (because I am too cheap/inexperienced to buy photo shop) to create a little mood board for our nugget's nursery. Except for the fabric, rug, and the paint color these are just approximations of what I want for the nursery.

Rug: Rugs USA
Fabric:Michael Miller Les Amis
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Mobile: http://www.ontobaby.com/2012/02/gray-and-yellow-woodland-themed-nursery/
Chair and Crib were from a google image search
dresser: Already Own.

This really helped me see everything together in one place so I am not constantly searching pinterest for that elusive pin that shows me something I wanted. What do you guys think? I am personally a fan of the mood board craze (not really a craze I just like that word). It is so nice to have a reference point when at the store trying to remember what I wanted in the first place.

Have you guys every done a mood board? How do you stay organized when trying to totally revamp a room?

Baby Gonzalez is a. . .

We found out on Thursday What our Little Nugget is going to be. Check out the video we made and posted for our friends and family on Facebook:




We were so overwhelmed with the number of responses we got to our facebook event for this. It feels so amazing to know that our baby is this loved already! Thank you everyone who participated and if you do not know us personally (i.e. your are a blogging friend) then thanks for tuning in to see what our sweet angel is.

 I hope everyone is having a great start to their Christmas week!

Sweet Dreams on a DIY Bed

Hi All! Welcome back to me actually blogging about home things. I know its been awhile but I just wanted to share with you guys our new bed. We (and by that I mean Jose) constructed this wonderful new platform bed from Ikea Expedit bookshelves.

We modeled our idea after this pottery barn bed:

www.potterybarn.com

However at the $1000 price tag it wasn't really a feasible option for us right now. That's where good old Ikea comes in to play. We had our eye on a bed at Ikea but when we went to the store decided that wasn't quite the right fit. Then my super smart hubby sat down in Ikea with a note pad and worked out the logistics of our dream bed. (Aren't I so lucky!)

I unfortunately was not around to capture all the pictures of said bed making so here is a small collage of what Jose snapped while building our bed.

And since I do not have visuals I will just walk you through the very simple process that was building our platform bed.

Materials: 

4 Expedit double shelves
(apparently Ikea does not have online the one we bought) 

3 Expedit single shelf

www.ikea.com

2 sheet of 7/16th plywood

2 4x4 for the "legs"

Drywall screws 

Rug Pad

Step 1: Decide how big you would like for the bed to be. For instance ours is a queen.

Step 2: To save you some time if you are looking to build a queen bed we used four expedit double shelving units and three single expedit unit to build this bed.

Step 3: Assemble the Expedit shelves according to the Ikea directions.

Step 4: Once you have those assembled cut the plywood sheets to equal 80 inches x 60 inches (this is the size for a queen bed.) You will have to measure your mattress if you want a different size.

Step 5: Space out your Expedit shelves (two doubles and one single on each side and the single at the bottom) to the size that you need (80x60 for our purposes).

Step 6: Attach the plywood to the Expedit shelves with your drywall screws.

Step 7: Then position your 4x4 braces where needed, every 11 inches on center, which might be overkill but you can never be too safe.

Step 8: Screw through plywood into your 4x4 braces.

Step 9: Throw your rug pad down and put your mattress back on and you are good to go.

I apologize for the sub standard pictures. These were taken in a rush and we desperately need to clean our room. So that prohibited getting better shots. (I promise to retake these when we have better light and a clean room.)

As you can see a very sturdy platform storage bed does not have to cost thousands of dollars. Also you may notice in the pictures we used a white sheet and paint to cover the plywood so it would not show. When we googled how to DIY this bed people suggested using a sheet to make it look nicer and not have the orange lines on the plywood showing through.

Hope you enjoyed this post. It feels good to be getting back to home stuff again. I am sure with the bambino/a you are going to be inundated with home projects from now until May. Especially nursery projects. (Eek! I can't wait. Just typing that makes me excited.)

I am a Happy Hooker

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a fantastic weekend. Today I just wanted to share with you guys another hobby of mine: Crochet. I learned how to crochet last year by watching this wonderful tutorial: http://www.craftyminx.com/crochet-school/. She does such an amazing job at breaking everything down and making sure you really learn it.

Here are a few of the projects I have made lately for various friends and family. I am thinking of opening an Etsy shop after the holidays and putting these type things in it. What do you guys think?

Also another great resource if you know how to crochet is www.ravelry.com. You have to sign up but it is free and it gives you access to thousands of crochet and knitting patterns. (Most for FREE!)

Are you a happy hooker? If so have you recently learned to crochet or have you been doing it awhile. I would love to hear about some of your projects.

Disclaimer: I was not compensated in anyway by Ravelry or Crafty Minx. I just really believe these are great resources for anyone wanting to learn to crochet or expand upon their basic skills. 

Wardrobe Wednesday: Little Nugget is 18 weeks

Sweater: Old Navy (earlier in the fall)
Belt: Old Navy (old)
Jeans: Liz Lange for Target (thrifted)
Shoes: Thrifted

So just wanted to pop in with the 18 week bump shot. Technically I have been shooting these on the last day of each week so I am 19 weeks tomorrow. It is crazy to me that I am one week away from finding out what our sweet little nugget's gender is. To say I am excited is an understatement. Also I never understood what people meant when they said pregnancy flies by but wow does it. I cannot believe we are almost half way done now.

Project Photo 365: Week Two and Three

So here it is week two and three. These past two weeks have been a busy one with Thanksgiving and my work schedule being different from normal. Anyway here are my photos from the past two weeks. Enjoy! This post was supposed to go up on Friday but as you may have seen my uncle passed away so I spent the latter part of last week with family. Hope you enjoy these photos and I am hoping to be back to regular blogging this week. You can also tell I am pretty far behind on my photo 365. Hoping to catch up with that this week too. (I really need to work on this procrastination problem.)

6 

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

Be back soon . . .

Sorry I have been an absentee blogger lately. My uncle passed away this week so I am spending time with family. I will be back at it on Monday.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree. . .

So I did it. I took the plunge and put up our Christmas tree before thanksgiving. I know there are some of  you cringing at this and I used to be one of you. However, over the past few years Jose and I have been unable to celebrate a traditional thanksgiving due to law school scheduling exams the week after. So I think this has contributed to my readiness for a Christmas tree this year. Anyway I thought I would show you guys how our tree turned out. Also we have almost reincarnated the book tree again. I loved it so much last year that we decided to have two trees this year. (Both in our living room) I know this seems a bit excessive but I really feel that it blends Jose and I perfectly. I love the traditional look of a Christmas tree and he loved our book tree and its simplicity last year. So in order to compromise this year we have two trees!

I hope you guys enjoyed our tree!

. What are you doing for a Christmas tree this year? Do you decorated before Thanksgiving? or do you consider it up there with a cardinal sin?